Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/320

Rh 300 A R A A K A ARAD, OLD, a city of Hungary, in the county of Arad, situated on the Maros, 145 miles S.E. of Pesth. It is a well-built town, with a fortress of considerable strength, erected in 1763, which occupies an advantageous position between two branches of the river. It is the seat of a Greek bishop, and has a Greek theological seminary. Its chief manufactiire is that of tobacco; and, besides carrying on a large trade in corn, it possesses one of the most celebrated cattle fairs in Hungary. In 1849 the fortress of Arad was captured by the Hungarian rebels, who made it their head quarters during the latter part of the insurrection. It was from it that Kossuth issued his famous proclamation, and it was here that he handed over the supreme military and civil power to Gorgey. The fortress was recaptured shortly after the surrender of Gorgey to the Russians at Vilagos. The population of Old Arad is 32,725, many of whom are Jews, while many belong to the Greek Church. NEW ARAD, situated on the left bank of the Maros, opposite to Old Arad, is a place of some trade, with a population of about 4000, including many Germans. ARAFAT, or ORPIIAT, a mountain near Mecca, a visit to which constitutes a necessary part of the great Mahometan pilgrimage. (See MECCA.) It consists of a granite rock about 200 feet high, which is ascended by staircases partly cut in the rock, and partly composed of solid masonry. On this hill Adam is said to have met his wife Eve after being separated from her for 120 years, and it is thence called Arafat, i.e., Gratitude. On the summit is a chapel, which the Mahometans believe to have been built by Adam. The interior was destroyed in 1807. ARAGO, FRANCOIS JEAN DOMINIQUE, one of the most popular physicists belonging to the first half of the present century, was born on the 26th February 1786, at Estagel, a small village near Perpignan, in the department of the Eastern Pyrenees. His father was a licentiate in law, and, being appointed treasurer of the mint for the department, removed with his family to Perpignan about the beginning of the century. Arago has left an autobiographical sketch, drawn with great vivacity, though touched occasionally with somewhat high colouring ; and to this we are indebted for the incidents of the earlier portion of his life. From boyhood he had decided military tastes, inspired by constant contact with troops at his native village, which was a halting station for soldiers on their way to Perpignan, or to the army of the Pyrenees. Francois was sent as an out door pupil to the municipal college of Perpignan, and began to study mathematics with an eye to the entrance examina tion to the Polytechnic school. Here he was soon beyond the depth of his master s knowledge ; but, with that undaunted spirit which carried him through many hard ships and difficulties in after life, he sent to Paris for the works of Legendre, Lacroix, and Gamier, and studied them assiduously in private. Within two years and a half he had mastered all the subjects prescribed for examination, and a great deal more ; he had read Euler s Introduction a I Analyse Infinitesimale, Lagrange s Theorie des Fonctions Analytiques and Mecanique Analytique, and Laplace s Hfecanique Celeste. He does not indeed pretend to have understood at the time all he read in these works, but he had been early encouraged by D Alembert s maxim, &quot; Go on, and the light will come to you,&quot; and he had carried it into practice. On going up for examination at Toulouse he completely astounded his examiner, M. Monge, by his knowledge of Lagrange, and received the highest com mendation from him. Towards the close of 1803 he entered the Polytechnic school, with the artillery service as the aim of his ambition. We have in the autobiography many amusing instances of the inefficiency of some of the Polytechnic professors at that time, of the peculiarly French familiarity existing between professors and pupils, as well as of the political passions absurdly allowed to distract the school. In 1804, through the advice and recommendation of Poisson, with whom he had become very intimate, Arago received the appointment of secretary to the Observatory of Paris, a valuable post for a young man of science, as it brought him in contact with the most eminent philosophers of the day. He now became acquainted with Laplace, and he had as fellow-worker in the laboratory the celebrated Biot. Through the influence of Laplace with the Government, Arago and Biot were commissioned to complete the meri dional measurements which had been begun by Delambre, and interrupted since the death of Mechain in 1804. The object of this survey was to determine, with as great nicety as possible, the ten-millionth part of a quadrant of the meridian through Paris, which had been agreed upon by the National Convention as the standard unit of length, and named the metre. To measure an actual quadrant from the north pole was, of course, an impossibility ; but the plan adopted was to measure the arc of the meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, and from their known difference of latitude to deduce the length of the quadrant. For this purpose they left Paris in 1806, to commence operations among the mountains of Spain operations attended with the greatest personal privation, fatigue, and danger. Biot returned to Paris after they had determined the latitude of Formentera, the southernmost point to which they were to carry the survey, leaving Arago to make the geodetical connection of Majorca with Ivica and with Formentera. The adventures and difficulties of the latter were now only beginning. The political ferment caused by the entrance of the French into Spain extended to these islands, and the ignorant populace began to suspect that Arago s movements and his blazing fires on the top of Mount Galatzo were telegraphic signals to the invading army. They became ultimately so infuriated that he was obliged to cause himself to be incarcerated in the fortress of Belver in June 1808. On the 28th July he managed to escape from the island in a fishing boat, and after an adventurous voyage he reached Algiers on the 3d August. Under the disguise of a strolling merchant he procured a passage in a vessel bound for Marseilles. A journey, however, of eleven months was before him ere he was destined to reach that port, for the vessel fell into the hands of a Spanish corsair on the 16th August, just as it was nearing Marseilles. With the rest of the crew, Arago was taken to Rosas, and imprisoned first in a windmill, and afterwards in the fortress of that seaport, until the town fell into the hands of the French, when the prisoners were transferred to Palamos. After fully three months imprisonment they were released on the demand of the Dey of Algiers, and again set sail for Marseilles on the 28th Nov., but when within sight of their port they were driven back by a southerly wind to Bougia on the coast of Africa. Transport to Algiers by sea from this place would have occasioned a weary stay of three months ; and with his usual courage, Arago set out for it by land under conduct of a Mahometan priest, reaching it on Christmas day, after encountering many perils from lions, and having uncomfortable squabbles with natives on the way. A six months stay in Algiers gave him opportunity to note the manners and habits of the people, of which he gives some amusing and graphic accounts. Once again, 21st June 1809, he set sail for his native land ; and, as by some strange perversity of fortune, he had to undergo a monotonous and inhospitable quaran tine in the Lazaretto at Marseilles before his difficulties were over. The first letter he received, while in the Lazaretto, was from Humboldt at Paris, sympathising with him, and congratulating him on the termination of his laborious and perilous enterprise ; and this was the origin of a connection